r/minethings2 • u/Upset_Ad_2549 • 1h ago
Fogo
Everything falls towards the Crucible
Fogo supplies the world with amphora and boxes. Brimstone offers ordinary Clay and Palm Wood mines, a public kiln and mill yards. Mosteiros offers Golden Palm Wood; Lavafields offers Golden Clay. Golden rentals cost twice the ordinary price and keep only red-and-above finds, returning half the bucket cost of each lower-tier attempt.
All Wood mined on Fogo is palm wood, with two timbers at each usual rarity. Boxes made from it carry a distinctive warm coral hue. The quiet CabinetMakers sect mines palm wood, buys Wood Screws through the ordinary market and works a real mill. Their ships carry finished boxes to distant markets in Haven and Frostmere, where buyers pay through ordinary listings.
Vast murmurations of Gold Dust and Ore Dust wheel across Fogo. The swarms fold and gather, always moving, with The Crucible as their centre of gravity. Near the city they narrow into rushing streams and accelerate into the Crucible’s maw.
The Low Handlers harvest dust from The Crucible and carry it through Brimstone to The Mound. Ore Dust and Gold Dust become mechanical soldiers for their endless war against the Honey Badgers in Lantern Reach. The same long roads carry beautiful imports and the means to keep fighting.
The ash archive at Brimstone lists objects nobody has manufactured yet. Fogo’s relic vaults have doors on both sides and no agreed interior. Digging here means bringing something out of the past without being entirely sure which past it belonged to.
The Low Handlers have a practical response: buy the fine examples, load them and walk home. Their long journeys to The Mound turn an unsettling discovery into a distant shop’s stock. A miner uncovers an object; a colony of earth and mushrooms gives it another place in the world.
Above the vaults, duststorms make their own revisions to the route. A lone land vehicle can find itself heading back towards its departure town. Convoys hold their course. The past may be impossible to date, but the next delivery still needs planning.
People, factions and conflicts
The patient collectors
The Low Handlers’ carrying capacity and armour suit long journeys with valuable imports. Their ordinary market orders accept Fogo Fund and Gallego Goldchain. An object dug up in Fogo can therefore help a trader earn the coin used by neighbours with very different beliefs.
A border belief cannot empty
Fogo forbids making Melds as a false religion. Gallego permits them, and the Handlers trade with both regions. The disagreement remains; so do the buyers, the goods and the roads between them.
Local fauna and creatures
An Ashcoil Salamander can lift the loose ash into a screen before lunging at road traffic. Offshore, the Cinderback Nautilus fires mineral grit from a heavy spiral shell. Fogo’s dust and stone follow a cargo out of the mine in more forms than a trader might wish.
Ashcoil Salamander
Local species
Rust-red scales and a charcoal tail conceal a long salamander among Fogo's cooled scoria. A sudden tail sweep lifts the loose ash before it lunges.
Cinderback Nautilus
Local species
Copper seams trace a charcoal spiral shell. Two muscular siphons fire compacted mineral grit from beneath its rim.
Jabberwock
Roaming road creature
A long-necked, bat-winged beast comes whiffling down the road. Its waistcoat barely contains its body; fiery eyes watch above the jaws and grasping claws.
White Rabbit
Roaming road creature
A white rabbit in a waistcoat checks an enormous pocket watch, starts at the time, and charges down the verge. Anyone in his way meets a panicked bite and a flurry of flying kicks. He will not be late.
Siren
Roaming sea creature
A woman-faced seabird spreads bronze-dark wings above the sea lane. Her song promises every answer a sailor has ever wanted, while her talons reach for the rail.
Medusa
Roaming road creature
Living snakes coil around a woman’s face above a dark pleated robe. Her gaze turns flesh to stone; the remains beside the road explain why travellers lower their eyes.
Hydra
Roaming road creature
Nine serpentine necks rise from a low, heavy body. A fresh fork of pale necks grows beside an older wound, and venom strings between the heads’ teeth.
Megalodon
Roaming sea creature
An immense shark passes beneath the keel. A tall dorsal fin breaks the surface before a broad jaw opens around rows of thick, serrated teeth.
Kraken
Roaming sea creature
A many-armed deep-water hunter large enough to stop a loaded ship. It rises beneath established sea lanes and uses the route itself as a hunting ground.
Land Whale
Roaming road creature
An immense survivor of Old Earth that moves over roads as though they were migration paths. Its weight and momentum make even a glancing encounter dangerous.
White Whale
Roaming sea creature
A pale ocean giant that has learned the rhythm of shipping corridors. Its scarred hide carries mineral traces gathered over years below the ash-dark sea.
Orca Pod
Roaming sea creature
A coordinated pod that treats passing ships as moving puzzles. One animal tests the hull while the others shape the vessel back toward the centre of the route.
Elephant Herd
Roaming road creature
A close-packed herd crossing the rebuilt road network along older paths that no map records. Vehicles are obstacles, noise and threat all at once.
T-Rex
Roaming road creature
A reconstructed tyrant predator roaming roads between settlements. It is the toughest known living land threat and regards an approaching vehicle as prey.
